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Monthly Archives: July 2013

As strange as it sounds, playing a Microsoft game on Linux is possible! And quite easy to do so…

These instructions should work for Ubuntu 12.04 and 14.04 with a legal copy of AOE2HD on Steam.

STEP 1: Install Steam with PlayOnLinux

The game is not available on Steam for Linux. We will have to install Steam for Windows using Wine. Playonlinux does al the downloading and configuration for you. You can find PlayOnLinux in the software center.

In PlayOnLinux press the install button

Search for steam and install it

Note: If you can’t find steam in PlayOnLinux, search for the game on their website and click on the “install” button. Now it should show up in the search results of PlayOnLinux.

STEP 2: Install Age of Empires II: HD Edition

Start Steam (double-click “Steam” in PlayOnLinux)

Click the install button

STEP 3: Rename launcher and remove vcredist folder

The launcher is a little bit buggy in Linux, so we have to make Steam skip that.

Right click on Steam in PlayOnLinux

Click “open application’s directory”

Go to the folder SteamApps/common/Age2HD

Rename “Launcher.exe” to “Launcher.exe.bak”

Rename “AoK HD.exe” to “Launcher.exe”

Every time you start AOE, steam tries to install vcredist and fails. This isn’t a problem, but you have to wait a while before AOE can start. To prevent this from happening, do the following:

Go to the folder SteamApps/common/Age2HD/_CommonRedist

Remove the folder “vcredist”

STEP 4: WOLOLOOOOOO!

You can now play AOE2HD on your Ubuntu, and enjoy listening to singing monks, building castles and killing turkeys. It is possible that you have to repeat step 5 after a game update. If you are still having problems, let me know in the comments section below.

PS: If AOE2HD breaks after an update, just re-install it, and it will work again.

NOT WORKING? TRY THESE:

On my system it works without doing these steps, but feel free to try them, if it does not work for you.